July 8, 2017

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Nougat share rises to double digits but so many Android devices still run KitKat and below

by John_A

More Android devices are being upgraded to Nougat, but the going is slow.

I love KitKats but I’m getting older now so I try not to eat them so often. I also used to love the software equivalent of the crunchy chocolate wafer treat, released in 2013, which further refined the Holo aesthetic unveiled with Ice Cream Sandwich two years earlier while paving the way for the complete visual overhaul that came with Lollipop a year later.

Now, in mid-2017, we’re approaching the release of a new Android version, 8.0 Ontbijtkoek, but the current standard, Nougat, has just reached a new milestone: a tenth of all Google Play-supported Android phones.

Android 7.x Nougat is now on 11.5% of Android devices, up 2% from the previous month. The only other version to rise in July was Marshmallow, version 6.0, which gained 0.6% to 31.8%.

Back to KitKat, though: it still runs on 17.1% of Android devices, down a percent from June but still commanding a significant portion of the world’s usage, especially when you consider Nougat slow ascent to double digits. Everything below KitKat — Gingerbread, Ice Cream Sandwich and the Jelly Bean Trio — comprise 9.5% of Android devices combined, so it’s really KitKat we’re looking to see drop significantly over the next year.

Of course, the stats to this site skew slightly newer, since many people enthusiastically replace their phones every year, or eagerly anticipate updates and go out of their way to buy devices, like Nexuses and Pixels, that receive them first. One day we’ll do a nice chart of what the AC traffic looks like.

Until then, you can check out Google’s Android version history dashboard and mourn or cheer the state of the platform’s fragmentation, depending on your perspective.